Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Richard & Judy sales update

BOTH AMAZON.CO.UK AND Play.com reported strong Richard & Judy Book Club sales this week, following the airing of the first book last week, A Thousand Splendid Suns (Bloomsbury), and Random Acts of Heroic Love (Black Swan) this week.

Amy Worth, Amazon Books Manager, said: “All ten titles have seen significant sales uplifts in recent weeks. All reside within the Amazon.co.uk Top 40, while those with the biggest increases include A Quiet Belief in Angels (Orion), and Random Acts of Heroic Love (Black Swan), both now in the Amazon.co.uk Top 10, along with Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns (Bloombsury).

Georgina Stoaling, Books Category Manager at Play.com - which is offering 40% off and free delivery on the ten titles on its homepage - also found that “sales were strong, as expected, and the top-selling title so far is A Thousand Splendid Suns.” This continues to lead the pack, heading for the number one spot this weekend, having sold 43,254 copies through Nielsen Bookscan for the week ending 12 January. Meanwhile Hosseini's first book, The Kite Runner (Bloomsbury), is enjoying a resurgence in sales, with the film tie-in and standard editions selling a combined 25,964 copies last week. Patrick Gale's Notes from an Exhibition (HarperPerennial), which will feature on the Book Club on 6 February, sold over 8,000 copies last week, which its publisher notes is more than Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (HarperPerennial) did at this stage last year, and the latter went on to become “the seventh biggest adult fiction title of the year”.

A spokesman said: “We're very pleased, especially as Notes is being featured slightly earlier in this year's run than Half of a Yellow Sun was.”